Tim Grobaty: Gayer than Long Beach: Salt Lake City?

LONG BEACH: WE'RE GAYER THAN YOU THINK: The Advocate, the most important magazine devoted to gay, lesbian and transgender issues, has just released its annual Gayest Cities in America list and, if you'd like to cut to the chase, Long Beach comes in 14th out of 15.

Outraged? Not even the word for it. There simply are no 13 gayer cities than Long Beach in the U.S.

"How gay is Long Beach?" the article asks like Ed McMahon in drag. "Its pride celebration is one of the country's biggest.... There are a ton of gay and lesbian bars ...." and that's about it, other than a gay joke about the "Queen" Mary. Like the ship hasn't heard that one before.

Here's the weird part: The gayest city in America according to the gayest magazine in America? Salt Lake City, Utah. And we add the "Utah" just in case you were thinking there must be a Salt Lake City in another state. One that's gay. Because, while Salt Lake City undoubtedly has a certain amount of gays - if you've got 14 mothers, you're going to probably be at least semi-gay - it's not the kind of place we're going to look in a nationwide game of Find Gay Waldo.

The Advocate says "there are more than a half-dozen hot spots for men and women," which, frankly, doesn't sound all that gay to us. And if the magazine meant gays and lesbians, then Long Beach has more than a half-dozen hot spots on Falcon Avenue alone.

The entire list of 15:

1. Salt Lake City

2. Orlando, Fla.

3. Cambridge, Mass.

4. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

5. Seattle

6. Ann Arbor, Mich.

7. St. Paul/Minneapolis

8. Knoxville, Tenn.

9. Atlanta

10. Grand Rapids, Mich.

11. Little Rock, Ark.

12. Portland, Ore.

13. Austin

14. Long Beach

15. Denver

You're going, "OK, Knoxville is gayer than San Francisco. Right. Are you sure the Advocate is a gay publication? Maybe it's been taken over by a group of Christian fundamentalists that hates Little Rock or Grand Rapids."

No. It's the good old Advocate. The simple explanation is the magazine apparently has grown weary of regular gay towns and has come up with some odd criteria in order to haul some new ones out of the civic closet.

"Do we really need another article telling us that the homos gather in West Hollywood and Hell's Kitchen," the magazine asks like Andy Rooney in a boa and pumps.

So the crew at the mag came up with a new equation: For each city, it awarded one point for each LGBT elected city official, for each WNBA team, for each semifinalist in the International Mr. Leather competition, for each Imperial Court chapter, for each softball team that competed in the Gay Softball World Series, for each LGBT bookstore, for each nude yoga class, for laws prohibiting transgender discrimination and for each concert by Gossip, the Cliks and the Veronicas. Then divide all those points by the population of the city and you get your gayness quotient.

That's too much math for us, but, as the guy in the song says, we "know that one and one is two." That's how many LGBT City Council members Long Beach has, and the Advocate only credits us with one. We're not sure which one.

Long Beach is also denied a point for its lack of an Imperial Court chapter. But Long Beach totally has an Imperial Court chapter. It's throwing a Casino Night at Ripples on Jan. 21. And, while we couldn't quite nail down a nude yoga class, we bet we could if you paid us extra to look harder.

But just give us credit for one more gay/lesbian/etc. elected city official and make the reckless assumption that the rest of the Advocate's figuring is flawless, and Long Beach leapfrogs Austin, Portland, Little Rock and Grand Rapids into the No. 10 position - a position almost impossible to get into while wearing yoga clothes.

There's no sense in getting all outraged, anyway. The list is obviously sort of funny by intent. It's a fact, though, that Long Beach would place high on a sort-of-funny gay city list and a sort-of-serious gay city list.